corrente

founding location of original corrente blog ~ 2003-2010

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Mooncalves for the milking

Come to the True Daddy my foolish moonstruck flock.

Today's Sunday sermon takes a walk-back through the mucky pasture of the modern conservative movement's cowed and dewey eyed reverence for the True Daddy Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Thanks to mw for the extensive excerpts below. Many of which are not posted online.

So, here we go, and again, thanks to mw for all the tireless digging:

There is a Moonie explanation for everything.

Lying. One of the central tenets of the faith is the doctrine of Heavenly Deception. Good must deceive evil. The non-Moon world is evil. It must be lied to so it can help Moon take over. Then it can become good under Moon's control. In the Bible, Jacob lied to Isaac. God rewarded Jacob by making him the father of the nation of Israel. Closer to home, you lie to your children about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, don't you? ~ [from Robert B. Boettcher's "Gifts of Deceit"; Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park and the Korean Scandal. (1980) Amazon Books]

Lying. One of the central tenets of you know who elses, well, call it faith if you like...

******

The Unification Church. Sugar true-daddy to the Right.

From "Moonstruck: The Reverend and his Newspaper" by Ann Louise Bardach, an article that was originally to have appeared in Vanity Fair in 1992 but was killed. The article finally saw print in 2004 when included in the book "Killed, Great Journalism Too Hot to Print" by David Wallis. Tina Brown was Bardach's editor

Some insiders say that the Unification Church was the number one contributor to conservative causes throughout the 1980s. In 1984, the church gave $750,000 to the Conservative Alliance, a group spearheaded by the late Terry Dolan. It was transaction riddled with irony: the Church fiercely condemns homosexuality and Dolan, a closeted gay man, was already sick with AIDS. Two years later the church bailed direct-mail king Richard Viguerie out of financial trouble with a whopping $10 million. Observers saw the transactions as a reward for a long friendship; Viguerie handled the Church's direct mail business since the late '60s. In 1988, the church made a $50,000 contribution to George Bush's re-election campaign. .......

******

[From] U.S News and World Report March 27, 1989Rev. Moon's Rising Political Influence - His empire is spending big money trying to win favor with conservatives.

On New Year's Day, 1987, South Korean mystic Sun Myung Moon, who considers himself to be the son of God, told his Unification church followers that he wanted to expand the church's political influence in the United States. His aim, Moon said, was "the natural subjugation of the American government and population."

The church and its businesses have spent as much as $300 million buying political clout. Through its 100,000-circulation Washington Times, Insight, a weekly newsmagazine, and a host of organizations that it funds, the church has become a major player in conservative politics. The church, which insists it doctrine stems from Christianity, is now trying to gain a foothold in right wing Christian circles through a new organization, the American Freedom Coalition. Moon's chief lieutenant, South Korean former attaché Col. Bo Hi Pak, boasted last year to conservative activist David Finzer: "We are going to make it so that no one can run for office in the United States without our permission."

Moon's bid for political power is disquieting because the church's theology runs counter to American democratic tradition. Moon claims that on Easter, 1936, when he was 16, Jesus appeared to him and told him that he had been chosen by God to complete the mission that Jesus had been unable to finish because of the Crucifixion. This mission, spelled out in his lectures in the text of The Divine Principle, consist in creating an "automatic theocracy to rule the world." Moon says, "Separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most." But former Unification official Michael Warder says, "Within the Moon movement, there is no foundation for the ideas of freedom, the rule of law and the dignity of the individual as they are understood in the West."...

The church's first and most expensive foray into the political arena was the Washington Times. The newspaper has lost more than $200 million since it was founded in 1982, but it has given the church needed prestige in Seoul and become a well read publication beyond its target audience of Washington conservatives. Claims by Washington Times editors that the paper is politically independent of the church were shattered in 1984 when James Whalen, its first editor and publisher, quit in protest of church attempts to assume direct control. Then in April, 1987, Editorial Page Editor William Cheshire and four colleges resigned over church interference with the newspaper's editorials. The Washington Times latest editor, Arnaud de Borchgrave, claims that the newspaper "has nothing to do with the church." But the paper and its sister publication, Insight, remain owned by News World Communications, whose president is Pak. While separate from the church's local ministry, it is an integral part of Moon's overall empire.....

The church has been building political organizations since the early '80's...

These organizations try to connect the church with the names of influential conservatives, who, according to former church official Warder, "provide legitimacy to Moon and his movement." In 1984 Joseph Churba, who had served for a year in the Reagan administration's Arm's Control and Disarmament Agency, was looking for someone to fund his Center for International Security. Through CAUSA, Pak agreed to aid a new organization, The International Security Council, with Churba as its president. The ISC's purpose, Churba stated, would be to counter Soviet attempts at "global hegemony."

Churba has recruited other Reagan officials, including former ACDA Director Eugene Rastow and former deputy U.N. Ambassador Charles Lichenstein. Lichenstein who is also a Heritage Foundation senior fellow, is chairman if ISC's International Advisory Council. The gnomelike Churba extols the "selfless commitment" of Rev. Moon to the project. He believes that the church has gotten a "raw deal" from the media because of "leftist Communist disinformation about its objectives and long term goals." But while the ISC states its link to CAUSA in its organizational brochure, it does not do so in its journal, Global Affairs, in the position papers it sends out to the press, or in the full page ads it has run opposing U.S.-Soviet arms-control agreements.

More tolerance. Through this method of recruiting, the church has established a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation, the largest of the conservative think tanks and an important source of government personnel during the Reagan administration. Although Heritage officials deny it, the foundation has dramatically changed its policy toward the Unification Church. In the early 80's the foundation, wary of the church's aims, prohibited staff or fellows from being associated with Unification Church organizations or taking money from the church or church-financed institutions.

As the Washington Times has become the voice of capital conservatives, the Heritage Foundation has become far more tolerant of church ties. The foundation accepts the participation of Lichenstein and other senior fellows in church-funded enterprises and allows its staff members to go to church conferences.

The Unification Church's newfound influence has occasioned intense debate among conservatives. One group of worried young conservatives meets regularly in private to compare notes about the problem. But little of the debate has surfaced in public forums. "Most people are afraid to address the issue because they don't want to publicize the extent of the church's involvement," says Amy Moritz of the Conservative National Center for Public Policy Research.

Because almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to the church, conservatives also fear repercussions if they expose the church's role. That happened when one organization, the Capital Research Center, published a newsletter last November warning of the church's attempt to create a "centralized world theocracy." One of its board members, who was also on the board of the International Security Council, resigned in protest, and conservatives charging that the paper was creating discord on the right, besieged the center with angry calls. "We got a very, very strong reaction -- almost as if we were the enemy -- because we raised the issue," says CRC Chairman Willa Johnson, a former president of the Heritage Foundation.

******

"centralized world theocracy" eh? Just exactly how would that work? From Sun Myung Moon's own book "The Master Speaks" this masterplan (bold emphasis mine):

"My dream is to organize a Christian political party including the Protestant denominations, Catholics and all the religious sects. Then the communist power will be helpless before ours. We have to purge the corrupted politicians and the sons of God must rule the world. The separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most. ...Upon my command to the Europeans and others throughout the world to come live in the U.S., wouldn't they obey me? Then what would happen? We can embrace the religious world in one arm and the political world in the other. With this great ideology, if you are not confident to do this, you had better die!" ~ link (quote/excerpt also appears in "Unholy Alliance" by Carolyn Weaver, Mother Jones magazine, January 1986)

******

Weaver also reproduces a letter from the Rev. Tim LaHaye (author of the "Left Behind" series) in which LaHaye cheers Moon henchman (and Washington Times exec) Bo Hi Pak for his glorious assistance on behalf of "the Master's plan". From "Unholy Alliance" by Carolyn Weaver (1986):

"Dear Bo Hi," began the Reverend Lahaye:

[...]

Bo Hi, I am encouraged! Amid the bad signs I see today, I also detect a lot of good signs. The secretary of education, Don Regan, Ed Meese, Pat Buchanan and many others. Even physical ailments to three of the 76 (year old) flaming liberal Supreme Court justices.

After wishing boils and plagues upon "activist" judges ... the letter concludes:

Once again, my friend, I am in your debt for your generous help to our work. You don't know how timely it was! This move and reorganization of the whole ministry to free me for more time in Washington and ACTV activities has been extremely expensive, much more so than I originally thought. But I see daylight down the road and feel it is part the Master's plan. As soon as I can afford it, I plan to hire a PR firm to give more coverage for ACTV, get our message to the people.

God Bless you! Let's plan to sit together at the first CBS shareholder's meeting when Jesse Helms makes his move to take it over.

your friend,Tim

ACTV being the "American Coalition for Traditional Family Values". Meanwhile, from Time Magazine, June 14 1976, "The Secret Sayings of Master Moon", (page 49), comes this divine directive (bold emphasis mine):

FUTURE PLANS (1976): Once our movement arouses the interest of the people in a nation, through mass media it will spread all throughout the world… So, we are going to focus our attention on one nation from where to reach the world. For that purpose I chose the U.S.

The present U.N. must be annihilated by our power. That is the stage for Communists. We must make a new U.N.

If the U.S. continues its corruption, and we find among the Senators and Congressmen no one really usable for our purpose, we can make Senators and Congressman out of our members… I have met many famous, so-called famous, Senators and Congressmen; but to my eyes, they are nothing. They are weak and helpless. We will win the battle. This is our dream, our project. But shut your mouth tight.

"shut your mouth tight" or John Bolton will make sure someone shuts it for you.